244 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



even more than this nearly unanimous opinion of the 

 whites was the entirely unanimous opinion of the Eskimos. 

 According to their account, the white men who had gone 

 hunting with them were uniformly incompetent. Most 

 of them could not hit anything they tried to shoot. A few 

 white men were wonderful marksmen when they were 

 shooting at a still target, but were so badly afflicted with 

 ''buck fever" that they could not hit caribou or other 

 big game. No white man was supposed to be able to 

 find his way about. According to the Eskimo view, a 

 white man was an amiable, overgrown baby and had to 

 be watched and protected and helped in every way. At 

 first these opinions did not impress me very strongly, but 

 I heard them from all sides and gradually they began to 

 soak in. 



I spent my first arctic winter and summer with Eskimos 

 who lived mainly by fishing. If I applied myself, I 

 found I could fish as well as they, nor did that surprise 

 them for they were all of the opinion that white men are 

 good at catching any kind of water game with hook or 

 net. To see a white man do well at any such work, from 

 herring fishing to whaling, did not surprise them. They 

 knew also that white men can catch seals in nets. But 

 white men were unable to get seals that had crawled out 

 on top of the ice, for then the tactics of getting them had 

 to be those of the hunter and not the fisherman. 



During my first summer I found I could kill ducks 

 and geese as well as the Eskimos. This did not surprise 

 flu m either, for it was in accordance with their general 

 view. White men were good with fowling pieces and 

 could even kill rabbits. 



By the fall of 1908 (my second year in the Arctic) I 

 had, in spite of myself, become obsessed with the idea that 



